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Archive for the ‘Caracas Connect’ Category

Conflicts Widen and Deepen as the New Year Unfolds in Venezuela Venezuelans entered 2015 bedeviled with several problems that have now been exacerbated by a new one: the collapse of global oil prices. Lines outside supermarkets and other stores have grown longer; but, more importantly, they have become more common… read more »

It has been a long, hot summer in Venezuela; fortunately, there has not been a great deal of political violence. For the time being, President Nicolás Maduro is unlikely to face the kind of political unrest that plagued Venezuela earlier this year, but his political star continues to fall. A Datanálysis poll claimed that 62.3 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of his performance in government. Perhaps more telling is the poll’s finding that 59 percent of Venezuelans think that “Maduro has ideals different from those of Hugo Chávez.”

Crises, said political scientist Charles Hermann, are typically defined by three factors: threat, time, and surprise. What we see in Venezuela is a gathering crisis characterized by high threat, a moderate but shrinking time to resolve it, and very little surprise. But, there is a large element of unpredictability due to the opaque nature of two key actors with influence: the Obama Administration and Venezuela’s military. The country’s political future is also clouded by divisions in both the government and opposition camps.

On March 6, 2014, the Center for Democracy in the Americas hosted a conference call regarding ongoing protests and violence in Venezuela. The topics discussed on this call were: The problems posed by the U.S. media coverage of the conflict; A comparison with other instances in the past 15 years… read more »

So far, 2014 has brought little more than a further deterioration of the center in Venezuelan politics. The weekend of February 12 saw the eruption of the most serious political violence in the country since the short-lived coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002. Two student demonstrators and a prominent pro-government activist died.

On December 8, Venezuelans went to the polls to elect a total of 335 mayors and 2,435 municipal council members. In the election, the government of President Nicolás Maduro and his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) running in coalition with the Communist Party and some other smaller partners, faced off against the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), led by Henrique Capriles Radonski. Maduro narrowly defeated Capriles in last April’s presidential election to replace Hugo Chávez, who died in March.

The summer months in Venezuela have seen strains in both the government and opposition camps, as municipal elections approach. A power-outage, which affected more than half the population, came at an especially unwelcome time for President Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Twelve weeks after the April 14 presidential election, the shape of government under President Nicolás Maduro has begun to take form. Although Latin American governments have recognized his victory in the election to replace the deceased President Hugo Chávez Frías, the United States continues to withhold formal recognition of the result.

Since the polls closed in Caracas on Sunday evening, April 14th, bringing a polarizing campaign to an end with a surprising photo finish, events in Venezuela have been fast moving. While Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner, and sworn in as president, the controversy surrounding the campaign is outliving… read more »

Hugo Chávez Frías died at age 58 on March 5. He was the dominant personality in Latin American politics over the past fifteen years. First, with the failed coup of 1992, which raised questions about the compatibility of neoliberal, free market economic policies with democracy; then, with his landslide election to the Venezuelan presidency in December 1998, he put himself at the leading edge of what has been called the “Pink Wave” – the rise of leftists to power after years in the wilderness.